


Forget Your Perfect Offering (there's a crack in everything)

by WishingStar



Series: Flare [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, M/M, Wild guessing re: potential plot points of "Black Panther"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-13 20:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13578579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishingStar/pseuds/WishingStar
Summary: Bucky Barnes fucked up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am SO SORRY this took so long. After all your impassioned responses to the end of _And all my instincts, they return_ I... may have panicked a little about making this one worth the investment. I, uh, hope it is. Shoulda maybe paid more attention to my own title.
> 
> (The title is from Leonard Cohen's "Anthem," btw. It was either this or a line from "Hallelujah" and I wanted to be at least a little original.)
> 
> Thanks to [Val Mora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora) for talking me through writer's block and for beta-ing, even if I didn't end up taking all of her suggestions. *bats eyes angelically*
> 
> Archive Warning: Brief use of Google Translate.

Bucky Barnes fucked up.

Bucky has, he's slowly come to realize, been fucking up on a relentlessly consistent basis since the summer of 1933. His first mistake, the whopper from which all subsequent fuck-ups would spring, was not killing himself after Steve made clear he would rather suffer a flare than seal a bond. Bucky'd _known_ at the time that they couldn't both be saved, and the best possible outcome was that one of them might be freed to start over, to live the life they both wanted. But Bucky was a coward—scared of death, scared of the Hell that would come after—and like a coward he'd panicked. Gone running to Steve, like Steve wasn't a kid just as scared and out of his depth as Bucky, and begged him for some kind of salvation. Let Steve take on the mantle of self-sacrifice, because Steve was good at that and he sounded so sure, and he said things Bucky wanted to hear instead of the things Bucky knew to be true.

Bucky's second, third, fourth, up till roughly one-millionth fuck-ups all pertained to the Winter Soldier, and he's still debating how many of those were properly his versus how many were someone else fucking him _over_.

The millionth-and-first, though, that one hits him in a dirty motel room in Tijuana, and it's all his own.

He'd left Stark's tower, Manhattan, and the tri-state area in a single march, sinking into the mindless endurance he'd cultivated as the Winter Soldier. Pushing his body to the brink kept him from thinking and helped keep the burn of the flare at bay. He reached Georgia by way of the Appalachian Trail, walking when he could, resting when his legs gave out, then turned west. By the Texas-Mexico border he must have looked like death warmed over, because the coyote who took his stolen cash and ushered him into the back of a van did so with a stern admonition to _not die in there, I don't need a corpse stinking up my trunk._

Bucky didn't die, but he might have come close. Waiting silently in cramped darkness, the past weeks' hardships all caught up with him at once—hunger, thirst, exhaustion, flare, fever. In Tijuana he promptly over-gorged on street food and contaminated water, which the Winter Soldier could have handled but which, in his weakened state, left him shivering on the bathroom floor for... a couple of days, probably. Once he'd recovered enough to remember what normal functioning felt like, he realized the flare had faded. He'd lost Steve for good.

What the _hell_ had he been thinking?

~*~

"Ce fac ei? Sunt bune?"

"Sunt bune."

"Dă-mi șase, mulțumesc."

Hydra never taught Bucky Romanian. He's come to suspect, though, that they never specifically taught him Russian either, nor Spanish nor Arabic nor any of the dozen other languages he now speaks without effort. What they did was sharpen his mind to the same preternaturally lethal edge as the rest of him. Bucky arrived in Bucharest on a Thursday night and read _how much for one motel room_ out of a phrasebook. By the following Thursday, the rest of the phrasebook and a hundred hours of local television later, he leased a dilapidated apartment from an old man who asked if he'd gone to school abroad, and if he was glad to be home.

During the war, he'd picked up French and German without trying. He'd liked to imagine he got them from Steve somehow, little bits of comprehension sifting through their bond like shards of seashell washed up on a beach. Steve, he could hear a word once and it was his forever; Agent Carter said they had expected that, from the serum.

Bucky had feigned misunderstanding, when they teased him in French, knowing he had something to hide but believing, naïvely, that it was the soul-bond. Something worthy of protection, a symbiont rather than a deadly parasite. Well, add that to the fuck-up list, too. Hydra had planted a—what was that bird, the one that stole into a stranger's nest and killed the babies and left its own in their place?—a cuckoo. They'd put a goddamn cuckoo-bird in his head and he'd guarded it thinking it was his and Steve's. No wonder their real bond had broken, or atrophied, or whatever the hell happened.

~*~

Bucky has envisioned a million scenarios in which he might see Steve again. Like the ones where the Avengers come to Bucharest, and Bucky turns a corner to find Steve barreling into him, in pursuit of some cut-rate terrorist. They'd need to be cut-rate, because Bucky and Steve would trip over each other in a tangled heap, and Bucky wouldn't want to be the reason Steve failed a mission.

Or the ones where Steve goes missing, it's all over the news, and Bucky has to suit up and rescue him. He has conflicted feelings about those. On the one hand they allow Bucky some measure of redemption, but on the other hand, how could he wish that on Steve?

Okay, then, maybe it's Bucky who falls into enemy hands. That's a nightmare he wishes he'd never have again, but it visits him often enough that he's learned to dull the panic by imagining Steve at the end. _Almost lost you there,_ Steve murmurs, cradling Bucky's head as he lies injured but alive. _It's okay. We've got the situation contained._ Steve has removed his heavy combat gloves, never mind the gossip, and his hands are warm.

Or maybe there is no mission, no danger. Maybe Steve comes to Bucharest on personal business. Like maybe he secretly never stopped looking for—

No. Bucky's allowed to dream about seeing him, not about laying any claim to his life. Steve isn't looking for him, and it's just as well. Because the thing is, Bucky's got no right to ask _what the hell was he thinking_ when he walked out of Stark Tower. He knows. Seventy years in Hell, and you'd think it would give him enough perspective to latch onto a good thing when he found it. Instead, in true Hydra fashion, it gave him just enough perspective to metaphorically hang himself. Bucky used to believe abandoning Steve would be the worst thing he could ever do. Thanks to Hydra he now understands, to the marrow of his bones, the naivete of that belief. There's always something worse.

He could claim he worried about... contaminating Steve, somehow. Wanted to spare the man he loved all the mess and fear and gnawing guilt that was (and still is) his life. But that puts too noble a spin on it. Steve's too much a hero, in uniform or out of it, to be dragged down by mere association with the likes of Bucky. Steve would get his stoic face on and hold Bucky's hand and wade through the psychological muck, all of it, scouring for anything potentially salvageable and working out how to rebuild it. Supporting, nudging, encouraging, pushing—

So Bucky ran. Like a beetle, scampering for cover from an overturned rock. Like a nightmare creature that can't face the sunlight. He couldn't face Steve, is all. Couldn't expose himself like that, not in the raw aftermath of his awakening from Hydra's words, a flare pulsing red-hot through every fiber of his being and rational thought an unfamiliar, wild thing that skittered away from him on more days than not. If Steve witnessed even an echo of the things Bucky had done and thought and felt since his fall in the Alps, that would have made it real and terrible in a way it hadn't yet become, never mind that he'd lived through it.

Right. Like it was ever _not real._

So maybe... maybe they'll meet in fifty years' time, in Majorca or the French Riviera. Bucky's a waiter—no, a maitre d', he's worked his way up—and Steve is on vacation, for once. Steve and his kids scuffle over the check and try fruitlessly to keep a passel of tow-headed grandkids from terrorizing Bucky's restaurant, while Bucky watches from behind the kitchen door and proves to himself, finally, that he made the right call.

A different scenario every day of the year, yet somehow he's completely unprepared for the gut-punch that comes from looking into Steve's eyes and having no idea what Steve is thinking.

~*~

Steve says, "Do you know me?" and all Bucky can think is that he remembered Steve in New York, he _said_ he remembered him in New York, why is Steve asking again?

Steve says, "I know you're scared. And you have every reason to be." But he doesn't know. He can't feel the race of Bucky's pulse, the clammy chill down his spine. He's guessing. No one, Steve included, will ever know how abjectly terrified Bucky is in this moment.

"I did what you asked," Steve goes on, his voice even. "I didn't look for you."

 _Then why are you here,_ Bucky wants to retort, but he understands, of course. The bombing. His picture in the paper. Steve has come as a warning, or worse: as Captain America.

Steve _doesn't know_ that Bucky didn't kill those people. And Bucky doesn't know what Steve is thinking.

"I wasn't in Vienna," Bucky manages. "I don't do that anymore."

Steve's face doesn't budge. No way to tell if he's unsurprised, or if the words convince him of Bucky's innocence. Or of his guilt.

"Well, the people who think you did are coming here now. And they're not planning on taking you alive."

Trying to read him is like scrabbling up a cliff face of sheer ice. Bucky can't get a foothold. He used to be better than this, he thinks; even as a kid, before the flare, he used to read Steve's mood from ordinary, mundane cues. Maybe Steve's gotten better at hiding, or Bucky worse at human interaction. Either way, he can't rely on Steve right now. He's on his own.

"This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck."

Bucky peels the glove off his left hand, but leaves his right covered. He's turned away, he realizes, hiding the motion—a sick mockery of a time when showing Steve his bare hands meant something intimate, something alluring. Skin bared to skin. All bared metal means is that he plans to hit as hard as possible.

"It always ends in a fight."

~*~

The cops don't kill him, for which he's pathetically relieved. Instead, they stuff him in a glass box on the back of a truck, and if any of them mention their destination in his hearing, he's too busy tamping down on a screaming panic to notice it.

If Bucky had taken Steve's hand in New York, he wouldn't have to worry about disappearing to some off-the-books blacksite now. Steve could have found him anywhere.

If Bucky were a better person, rather than the type of coward capable of viewing his soulmate as some kind of goddamned personal tracking device, he might've had the courage to take Steve's hand.

~*~

The shrink the U.N. sends him, Bucky can tell within seconds, embodies every distasteful expectation he's ever had about shrinks. The man speaks condescendingly and wears a fake smile. He calls Bucky "James" in an idle, detached way, and he says _I can't help you if you don't talk to me._

When the lights go out, he gives a different kind of smile. The fear in Bucky's gut leaps to attention.

"What the hell is this?"

"Why don't we discuss your home," the shrink says, and Bucky gets mental whiplash, remembering a drafty Brooklyn tenement and—and— _he can't know about that._

"Not Romania," the shrink goes on. "Certainly not Brooklyn, no. I mean your real home."

He holds up a red book. Bucky recognizes that book—

~*~

Bucky used to imagine, in weak moments, coming home. The prodigal son returned. Steve deserved better, of course, always would, and he might be angry at Bucky for destroying their bond and then crawling back as though he'd done something forgivable. But Steve wouldn't say _no_. Bucky'd dug his hooks in too deep, back before he realized what he was doing. Steve loved him like breathing, like his own heart beating. When you loved someone like that—and Bucky understood, because he loved _Steve_ like that—the idea that you might be happier loving from a distance, remembering the good times rather than canceling them out with a new slew of bad ones, minute by disappointing minute—it seemed unthinkable. Steve would want him back, even if it ruined his life.

Bucky had planned to stay in Mexico, after that initial march. But around the one-year mark, he found himself pulled over the Texas border again. Steve had made headlines recently, something about an army of robots levitating Sokovia City. The talking heads were tearing him a new one, saying his team had caused damage to life and property far in excess of what the situation warranted. And Bucky thought _somebody needs to stand by him._

But somewhere on the long trek north, his resolve—or his madness—faltered. Steve had met the accusations head-on, like always, and his teammates, the Black Widow and Iron Man and the rest, drew their share of the fire. Without any late-breaking additions to the story, the news outlets had wandered off in search of fresher blood. Bucky's return would only reopen old wounds and possibly spark a whole new public controversy, to no one's benefit.

Steve had backup. Bucky should leave them to it.

So he'd wavered, slowing down the closer he got to New York, like a cart losing momentum as it rolled uphill. He ran out of cash partway through West Virginia, and started lingering in one place and another long enough to pick up construction jobs on street corners. He was scooping scrambled eggs onto a plate one morning in a Motel 6, when the TV in the corner made a sound like "Captain America."

Bucky found a seat, calmly, watching the screen in his peripheral vision. It showed two blond women, one vaguely familiar—the morning show host, presumably—and the other a stranger. A screen caption labeled her _Sharon Carter – former SHIELD agent_. Bucky gave up on calm and fixed his eyes on the screen.

Sharon sat with cotton-gloved hands folded in her lap, cool and self-possessed as she fielded the questions thrown at her. _Yes,_ those paparazzi shots were real; she'd spent the weekend in Malibu with Captain America. Call him Captain Rogers, please, he prefers it. _No_ , she wouldn't call it a 'whirlwind romance', because they'd actually been dating for a couple of months now. _Yes_ , she was very happy, and she liked to think she made Steve happy too. _Yes,_ since it was going to come out sooner or later, she was the grand-niece of the famous Peggy Carter. _No,_ she would not be joining the Avengers; she had a strict policy against dating co-workers. Hell, Steve'd had to blow up SHIELD before she would agree to so much as a cup of coffee. The studio audience laughed.

What did she think of the speculation, seemingly confirmed by the Black Widow leak of classified SHIELD intel, that Captain Rogers bonded a soulmate during the Second World War?

Well, that was Steve's personal business, wasn't it? Sharon wouldn't be much of a girlfriend if she betrayed his confidence on national TV. And anyway, what did his past relationships have to do with their future?

Forty-eight hours later, Bucky stowed away on a freighter to Amsterdam.

~*~

He wakes up groggy, like he's drunk too much and maybe taken a couple blows to the head in the meantime. His shoulder's twisted up behind him. Can't move his left arm.

"Hey, Cap!" he hears. He opens his eyes, half-expecting to find his gaze drawn to Steve like iron filings to a magnet—but no, he's looking at the empty floor of a warehouse. How did he get here?

"Steve?"

Steve comes into view then, arms folded, keeping his distance. He wears a water-stained gray shirt that leaves his arms bare from bicep to wrist. Like he's lost his jacket somewhere, in a scuffle maybe. Bucky feels a familiar prickle of despair then, as the shrink's voice in the dark comes back to him. _Mission report, December 16, 1991._

Steve's voice is cold. His face is a sheer cliff of ice. "Which Bucky am I talking to?"

~*~

If Bucky had taken Steve's hand in New York, he wouldn't currently be folded double in the backseat of a goddamn clown car driven by Steve, who in turn wouldn't be breaking the law by harboring a known terrorist. Hell, forget taking his hand. If he'd shown up on Steve's doorstep begging forgiveness, like he'd come close to doing last year, they still wouldn't have a bond and Steve's life would still be a mess, but at least it wouldn't be the kind of mess that turned them both into international fugitives. Fuck-up number one million and two, then, was leaving North America on board that freighter.

They pull to the shoulder under a bridge, behind an idling black Audi. Steve glances at Bucky, then at Wilson, who tips his head in a go-on gesture. Steve exits the car, mumbling something about being right back. Up ahead, a blonde woman emerges from the Audi.

Bucky can't see much from the backseat, with Wilson's headrest practically sticking him in the eye. But he thinks the woman is smaller than she looked on TV, with pixyish features and hair even blonder than Steve's.

"Sharon Carter, huh."

He and Wilson haven't exchanged a word since the warehouse, but given the steady glare on Wilson's face every time their eyes accidentally meet, Bucky has no trouble interpreting the little head-jerk in front of him. Wilson winces, then steels himself.

"I want you to carefully reconsider whatever it is you're about to say." Wilson's tone could cut diamond. "She's good for him."

Bucky wants to retort _I never said she wasn't_ , but that would mean acknowledging the various implications a statement like _she's good for him_ entails.

"Doesn't look much like Peggy," he comments instead.

"She's her great-niece, not her twin."

Sharon and Steve appear to be discussing something in the trunk of Sharon's car, which Bucky can't make out.

"She was there for him, you know," Wilson says, almost conversationally, but Bucky hears the tense undercurrent to his words. "After that bullshit you pulled at Stark Tower. She helped pick up the pieces. I couldn't have done it alone." His voice sharpens. "You should know it was a two-man recovery job, what you did to him."

Bucky holds that at arm's length. Letting it sink in won't help anyone. "I never asked for another flare."

"Yeah, well, neither did he. Doesn't mean he didn't want it."

Bucky licks his lips. There's no point in not asking. Wilson can hardly think worse of him. "Does he love her?"

"Why, breaking him up once wasn't enough?" Wilson turns, his face appearing in the gap between the two front seats. He has to lean almost sideways to make eye contact, and the effect would be funny if Wilson weren't glowering fit to kill.

"Look, I might not be juiced up on whatever the two of you have got," Wilson snaps, "but Steve is my friend. So I'm gonna tell you this once, and I expect you to remember it. I signed on to help him keep your skin intact, because otherwise he would've died trying. And I'll see this Winter Soldier clusterfuck through to the end, because I'm an Avenger, and that's what we do. But I will not stand by and watch you hurt him. That is not what I signed on for. You had your chance, you blew it sky-high, and you took him down with you. Now he's got another chance, with someone who's _good_ for him, and I'll be honest, I don't give a rat's ass—" Wilson pauses, makes a face like he's bitten something sour, and gives his head a little shake. "Look. You've got a fucked-up situation and I'm sorry, and I'll do what I can to get you out of this mess you're in right now. But I _will not_ let you wreck this chance for Steve, not if I have to beat your supersoldier ass back into World War II. Are we clear?"

Bucky can't exactly argue.

Beyond the windshield, Steve is kissing Sharon.

~*~

Bucky's impression of Tony Stark isn't based on much. From their brief meeting in New York he remembers a nervous talker, quick-thinking but frenetic, eager to prevent violence at any cost. From Iron Man's public appearances, he's noticed a preference for glib deflection over confrontation. Still, Stark is an Avenger; presumably he packs deadly firepower and has some idea of when to use it.

Steve and Wilson's quiet conversation in the front seats reinforces Bucky's assessment. They seem to consider Stark a threat, but a distant one: stay under the radar and they can avoid a confrontation altogether, probably. Hopefully. Neither Steve nor Wilson broaches the subject of how to win a confrontation should one occur.

In retrospect Bucky, as an outsider, should have been the one to recognize the error. Failure to account for a new variable: namely, that Stark considers Bucky a threat. Steve and Wilson used to work with Stark, _trusted_ Stark, of course they'd hesitate to count him as an enemy. Bucky should have spoken up.

"Wow, it's so weird how you run into people at the airport. Don't you think that's weird?"

"Definitely weird."

What number is he up to, one million and three?

~*~

Wilson can't follow through on his threat from the car, Bucky realizes. Because Wilson, after shooting Bucky a look like he'd just scraped him off the bottom of a shoe, told Steve _Get to the jet. Both of you. The rest of us aren't getting out of here._ This makes Wilson one of the good ones, the kind who means it when he tells his enemies _I'll do what I can to get you out of this mess_. Better than Bucky deserves.

"What's gonna happen to your friends?" Bucky asks.

Steve hesitates. "Whatever it is, I'll deal with it."

Losing Wilson: one million and four.

One million and five: not a discrete mistake, but a serious enough consequence that Bucky feels compelled to increment the number. Because for probably their entire lives, Steve has tackled problems by setting his jaw and saying _we'll deal with it._ As children "we" meant him and Bucky; as soulmates, it meant him and Bucky; as soldiers it meant him, Bucky, and the rest of the Howlies; in this century, whenever he said it on TV, it meant the Avengers. Always: _we'll deal with it._ Together.

One million and five: somewhere along the line, Bucky made Steve an _I_.

He'll honor Wilson's request, though. He's already wrecked most of Steve's life, but he hasn't wrecked what Steve has with Sharon, and he won't. Once they've stopped the other Soldiers, he'll go. Somewhere. Somewhere Steve can't follow, from which Bucky himself won't be tempted to return. If such a place even exists.

~*~

Stark catches up with them in the Hydra bunker. He's alone, his face uncovered, and he and Steve trade cautious banter as Stark explains his presence. There might be components of an apology buried in there somewhere. 

When Steve lowers his shield, it's a decisive motion; an explicit statement of trust.

"It's good to see you, Tony."

"You too, Cap."

That. That, right there, is why Bucky needs to leave Steve with his new friends and get out of the way. Because a friend is someone _good to see_ , and Bucky is not that. If Bucky were capable of friendship, anymore, he wouldn't have to lie about remembering his old pal Howard Stark, much less remembering the night he bashed the man's head in.

He still fights Stark for all he's worth, because God help him, if he wanted to die he'd've done it a long time ago.

~*~

Steve's behavior shouldn't have surprised him, Bucky reflects later, in the quiet safety of a Wakandan hospital room. Steadfast, bullheaded constancy has been one of Steve's hallmarks since... well, since forever. He truly cares for Sharon Carter, Bucky's certain, just as he obviously cares for Tony Stark. And Bucky has no reason to doubt Wilson's report that he left Steve in pieces, heartbroken and abandoned. And yet, because Steve is Steve, none of this stopped him from putting himself between Bucky and Stark and uttering perhaps the greatest falsehood ever to pass his lips—because it used to be true, and Steve probably thinks that makes it true forever, like how he used to say _you can take the boy out of New York but you can't take New York out of the boy_ —

 _I was your friend_ , Stark had whispered, in the small, uncertain voice of one facing an inexplicable loss.

And Steve, with a little head-tilt of pained acknowledgment, had answered, _He's my soulmate._

Bucky can't keep him on the hook like this. Reason number—are reasons what he's counting? Close enough. Reason number one million and six.

~*~

Steve appears in the doorway before long, and wends his way past furniture and machinery toward the cot where Bucky sits. Between Wakandan expertise and his own healing factor, Bucky can hardly tell he's been in a fight. Bucky wonders if his own injuries have faded similarly. The flesh ones, at least.

Steve gets close enough to touch, but keeps his hands in his pockets. From the glimpse of bare wrist beneath his shirt sleeve, he isn't wearing gloves either. "What did the doctors say?" he murmurs.

Bucky could answer this a number of ways. _All you need now is rest and plenty of fluids,_ the trauma surgeon had said, after tying off the last set of stitches. _We'll have that arm replaced in no time_ , the prosthetist had declared cheerfully. _Come talk to me any time you're ready_ , the psychiatrist had offered.

"Wakanda has cryofreeze technology," Bucky tells him.

Steve glances over his shoulder at the giant tube, even though Bucky hasn't pointed. "I'm sure it's fine," he says quickly. "There are plenty of legitimate medical uses for something like that. And I bet you need to sign all kinds of waivers, before they put you under."

"Yeah. I figure they'd be a lot more concerned with the comfort of the patient, too."

Steve blinks. "Probably, yeah."

In years past, Steve could have guessed his intent. Now he needs to spell it out. Luckily, with the distance between them, he can speak without feeling the hurt his words cause.

"I asked them to put me back under."

Steve's jaw clenches, and from the shift in his arms he's probably balled up both fists inside his pockets. That's all. Bucky has the irrational thought that if Steve isn't going to at least pretend to care, he ought to just leave.

Of course he cares. He cares enough to pretend otherwise. 

"You don't have to do that," Steve says finally. "If this is... about me, about us, you don't have to—

"It's not about you," Bucky lies. "It's pragmatic. As long as that book is out there, I'm a danger to everyone." _And I don't need the book to hurt you._

"We'll track down the book. We'll make sure nobody knows the words. They've got good neurologists here, I'm sure they can undo what Hydra did—"

"That could all take years. What do I do in the meantime, sit in solitary confinement?"

"You'd be with me." Steve pulls his a hand from his pocket and reaches out, as though to clasp Bucky on the shoulder. Then he pauses. He's lifted his right arm, meaning the shoulder he'd aimed for was the shorn-off metal stump. His bare hand hangs in midair, a blighted promise.

"Steve." Bucky starts gently, but halfway through the syllable he changes his mind. "God _dammit_ , Steve." He snatches Steve's hand with his own and squeezes it, tight as he dares. _This is what being with me gets you_ , he wants to say but can't force past the sudden lump in his throat, because there's nothing. No frisson of heat nor surge of affinity between them. Just the white pinch of his fingertips. It's like gripping the hand of a corpse.

"I'm sorry, Steve. I can't—I can't begin to tell you how sorry. But I need you to let me go."

Steve stares at Bucky for a moment, face impassive. Then he tugs at his hand, and Bucky belatedly remembers to release it. Finally he steps back, nodding faintly. "Yeah," he says. "Okay. Well, I—maybe I'll see you around. Once you wake up, I mean."

"Yeah. Maybe sometime."

Bucky wants to say _I love you._ It doesn't seem right, after all they've been through, that he should let Steve walk away without saying it. The words bubble up in his throat, and as Steve steps back, suddenly it's all he can do to choke them back. But if he says them, Steve will never leave his side again.

He doesn't say them. Steve walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Made it to the end of canon! And Black Panther doesn't come out for another week, so the next chapter doesn't contradict a darn thing. Ha!


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky respects King T'Challa. Is grateful to him, certainly. Likes him, even, despite the man's tragically nonexistent sense of humor. Fighting side-by-side to thwart a palace coup will do that, will instill camaraderie between even the most reluctant of allies. Bucky hadn't technically belonged in that fight—the Wakandans never did sort out the trigger words in his head, and he only woke because that psycho Killmonger breached the medical wing and shut down his cryotube along with everything else. But Bucky has accomplished a lot of good, these past few days. Enough, maybe, that if he keeps it up, the world could someday be a better place for having him in it. He hopes T'Challa will give him that chance.

But it's more than that. T'Challa has a flair for leadership and a sense of duty to rival Steve's, and a moral compass that's just as strong even if it points differently sometimes. Bucky followed him into combat like slipping into a well-worn pair of shoes, like finding a piece of himself he'd forgotten was lost.

So he feels a lot of surprisingly conflicted emotions, every time he sees T'Challa smile like a dope whilst rubbing noses with his recently-acquired soulmate.

"They're disgustingly cute, aren't they," Natasha remarks, coming up beside Bucky and crossing her arms. Bucky hasn't made up his mind about Natasha. She's obviously skilled and a staunch ally, despite having shown up out of nowhere at the eleventh hour. But she reminds him a little too much of himself. Right now she follows his gaze along the shaded, flower-studded path, to where T'Challa and his lady sit on a park bench, whispering and twining their fingers together. "I don't know how he does that while maintaining his dignity. I'd like to learn the secret."

"Must be a subconscious thing, because I don't think he's actually considering his dignity right at this moment," Bucky says, as T'Challa steals a kiss. He's remembering how the world used to narrow, when Steve slid a hand along his jaw just like that, blue eyes filling his vision and skin thrumming with contact and Steve's intense gladness resonating with his own. Harmonizing and creating something more, like a chord so well in tune you can hear the overtones.

Natasha scoffs. "T'Challa keeps one eye on his dignity around the clock."

"Maybe he did before. Finding a soulmate tends to change your priorities." Steve had melted like hot taffy, once they sealed their own bond. Not so as anyone else would notice—he only let his guard down when they were alone, and anyway the melted version of Steve Rogers was still a spitfire by anyone else's standards—but he started letting on when he was sick or hurt, letting Bucky coddle him, even laying his head in Bucky's lap when they sat together. And Bucky savored it fiercely, being allowed to see this side of him... at least until Steve caught the echo of his triumph through their bond, and felt the need to reassert his toughness. Bucky got goosed a lot, those first couple of months.

But there were other times when they both relaxed, lazing on Sunday afternoon maybe, Bucky reading on the couch while Steve sketched, separate but gravitating toward skin-on-skin contact. They would end up in bizarre configurations, those times—Steve with one sleeve rolled up and his elbow hooked over Bucky's exposed ankle, or Bucky jackknifed so his head rested on the back of Steve's shoulders and his feet dangled over the back of the couch (that one was never comfortable, but it looked like it _should_ be so he kept on trying it). Stealing kisses without bothering to break the silence. Trying to make each other laugh without saying a word.

"Barnes? Barnes. _Bucky._ "

He's jostled by Natasha's hand on his arm. They're alone in the garden. Bucky stares blankly at the now-empty stone bench, missing Steve like a physical hole in his chest.

"What's wrong?"

"I—nothing. Just—" He averts his eyes to hide the dampness in them. "I need some time alone."

"I beg to differ." Natasha leans on his arm and tips her head toward his. "Not to be pushy, but if you ask me? Being alone is the last thing you need."

"You've known me less than forty-eight hours."

"What can I say? I'm good at reading people. For example, three months ago when Sharon Carter found herself at the end of a two-year relationship, _she_ needed time alone. It was a mutual thing, sometimes two good people just realize they're not working out. But that doesn't make it hurt less. So I gave her space, because that's what she needed. But different people cope with different things in different ways, so—"

Bucky figures Natasha knows perfectly well what she's doing, so she can't complain that he's already jogging toward the park's entrance.

She catches up with him at the gates. "You'll find him faster if you know where to look."

~*~

Natasha leads him to a run-down warehouse district on the outskirts of Rabat. The dirt road is littered with shards of glass and other detritus. Broken windows and doors gape like toothless smiles in the falling dusk.

"Relax." Natasha pulls out her phone. "They don't live here. This is where they've tracked the latest Hydra lead."

Bucky has a knife in his boot and a derringer under his jacket, but nothing bigger. "Oh," he grumbles. "Now I'm much more relaxed."

Natasha smiles, taps her phone screen a few times, and sets off down a side alley. Bucky follows, rounding a corner in time to see her pick up the pace as the one with the bow—Hawkeye—emerges from one of the warehouse doors and strides across the packed dirt to meet her.

"Good, you made it," he says, and clasps her shoulder. "Showed up after the work was done, of course."

"Well, I would've hated to steal your thunder." Natasha goes in for a hug.

The guy with the shrinking suit, Scott Lang, comes out the door next. He notices Bucky, and his eyes and mouth go very round. He's followed by the Scarlet Witch, who smiles faintly and nudges him out of the doorway.

Steve is talking to Wilson as he exits, their heads bent together. Steve's grown a beard and his hair is darker, like he hasn't spent much time in the sun lately. He's carrying an M249 under one arm, and Bucky blinks, jarred by the sight of a machine gun where the shield should be.

Steve sees him and stops dead, like he's seen a ghost.

 _Hey, Steve_ , Bucky tries to say. He can't breathe.

He needs to breathe. He needs to say something.

Steve beats him to words. "It's you," he rasps, like he's having similar difficulty.

"Yeah," Bucky manages. That's not enough. 

"Are you..."

"I'm here." His brain shudders back into gear, dredging up how this scene started in his most indulgent fantasies. The ones he never dared finish. "I'm—here. I don't know what to say, Steve. I got no right to ask. I got no right—but—I love you. And I'm done, I'm done running away. It's not fair of me to ask. But if you'll have me—"

Steve moves forward, the gun clattering to the ground as he tries to set it down without slowing. Then he breaks into a run. Then Bucky is running to meet him.

Steve catches him mid-stride, the collision nearly knocking Bucky's hard-won breath out of his lungs again, proving he's not dreaming. Steve wraps him in a tight embrace and Bucky clings, burying his head in Steve's shoulder. The scrub of facial hair against his temple is new, but Steve smells just like he remembered. This is no flare, no electric spark lighting a conflagration; instead, it's like banked coals and the welcoming, enveloping warmth of _home_.

"I'm sorry." Bucky doesn't cry but he comes close, taking great gulps of air like sobs. "I'm sorry. I don't know how you even look at me—"

"Don't you dare."

"Steve, we could've had so much, and I threw it away—"

"I don't care." Steve tightens his hold. "I don't care what you threw away. You came _back_."

"If I hadn't been scared of my own shadow—"

"I don't care about that."

"—couldn't tell a good thing when it stared me in the face—"

"Bucky! How many times are you gonna make me say it?"

"But how can you not—"

Steve wedges his fingers under Bucky's chin, tips it upward, and kisses him. Bucky lets himself be shut up, sinking into the kiss... then pulls back with a surprised, giddy laugh, because apparently Steve? Without the benefit of a direct line to Bucky's deepest desires, uses his tongue in all the wrong ways.

Steve makes an indignant sound Bucky has never heard from him before. "Not you too!" he whines. "Sharon said I was getting better!"

Bucky heroically refrains from breaking into gales of laughter. "You gotta relax, pal," he says. "It's not a competition. You gotta... let me." He pulls Steve in again, taking the lead this time, despite an awkward awareness that he's also flying blind without a bond to guide him. He teases at first, nipping Steve's lower lip, then deepens the kiss by degrees and this, _this_ is what he's been missing—this soft give-and-take, Steve leaning into him like he can't imagine being anywhere else. This slow unfurling of heat, drawing him in, stealing conscious thought—

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Hawkeye is making frantic time-out signs with his arms. "Look, there's an abandoned building behind us. There's other buildings—" he points. "Hell, the van has tinted windows, the rest of us can walk back—"

"Like hell we're walking back."

Bucky's head swivels toward Wilson, who's standing next to Hawkeye with his arms crossed, scowling. Of course he's witnessed the whole thing, and if Bucky had been looking at anything other than Steve, in the flesh and _happy to see him_ , he might've had the presence of mind to worry about whether Wilson's ass-kicking threat still holds, with Sharon Carter gone.

Right now, in Steve's arms, he can't bring himself to care.

Wilson stares, motionless, as though daring him to blink. Bucky doesn't blink and doesn't loosen his hold. 

Wilson raises an eyebrow in an expression that might mean _well, you tried_ or maybe _I should have known_ or just plain _I give up_ , but seems more resigned than threatening. "You are not taking the van," he reiterates.

"Okay, fine," Hawkeye says impatiently. "Not the van. My point is, there are private spaces all around, but this right here is _outside in broad daylight_ and if they're gonna—do the whole sealing thing—"

"I think we're good." Steve turns back to Bucky with a hesitant smile, as though seeking confirmation. Bucky tips their foreheads together, then nuzzles his cheek. Then he pulls back, because he needs to look Steve in the eye when he says this. Part of him doesn't believe it yet, but that part of him's behind the times—he and Steve together, they'll _make_ it true.

"Yeah. We're good."

**Author's Note:**

> Part of me wanted to leave them right here, as some kind of artistic commentary on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or the potential of new beginnings, or some such. Another part of me kinda winced guiltily at some of the comments on the last fic and commenced writing a ~~fix-it~~ epilogue without my inner artist's permission. But as they say, it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. It also probably helps that I have a third part insisting strenuously that I'm here as a fan and a shipper and my inner artist can suck it.
> 
> Epilogue will be up shortly. (By which I mean LESS than six months from now, good grief. It's half-done and should top out around 1500 words, how long can it possibly take?) It's not much, just a cut-scene that probably happens in this 'verse at some point and might even mean what you think it means. ;-)


End file.
